


Something Better

by emjam



Category: Borderlands (Video Games), Tales from the Borderlands - Fandom
Genre: Atlas CEO Rhys, Cybernetics, Fake Technology, Gen, I honestly just made a lot of stuff up, Missing Scenes, Nightmares, Rated for cursing, Rhys didn't mean to do that... it just happened, Theft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-27
Updated: 2017-07-27
Packaged: 2018-12-07 03:33:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11615001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emjam/pseuds/emjam
Summary: Rhys fixes himself up after the fall of Helios. It's kind of a process, but it gets done.[Just some missing scenes that take place after Rhys comes to in the rubble, from getting to the Atlas facility to repairing his cybernetics and completing prototypes.]





	Something Better

It's dark in here, there's blood all over the right side of his vest, he's clutching the deeds to a felled company in his remaining hand, and something in here fucking reeks.

Besides him, that is. He also smells terrible.

Oh, and he's completely alone, and just single-handedly brought many corporate lives literally crashing to the ground. The corporation itself, too.

His mind is swimming with so many _things_ – owning Atlas, figuring out what to do with his cybernetics, finding a light switch somewhere, finding out where that disgusting _smell_ is coming from. But standing there, in the midst of confusion and his own dried blood, he remembers what Jack said about Rhys being better at killing than he was.

Ugh. He shakes his head. “No. _Not_ high on the list of priorities right now, okay? I just gotta... not think about it.” Yeah.

His right arm socket is kinda still throbbing something painful, having made a beeline straight here when he woke up, and he takes a deep breath. “Let's think about that instead. What do I need, I need... some light in here, Jesus.” It's weird to be completely alone, for a lot of reasons. For instance, no nosy blue holograms are taunting him and trying to kill him from the inside out.

_Stop thinking about that and start thinking about your health, for chrissakes_ , he thinks, and looks around. Most of the panels of screens in the room don't look particularly active. He tries to scan something to glean some information, remembers that he very aggressively does _not_ have his ECHO eye implant anymore, swallows, and realizes he's gotta do this like a normal person. An orange glow gently tints his skin when he decidedly approaches the one monitor that's still fully running in the place. He tosses the rights to Atlas next to the keyboard. The cold light from the luminescent plants outside paints his contemplative face a pale blue.

“Okay, how do I get some actual light in here?” He asks no one, and silence answers as he taps a key to wake up the system. The screens associated with the keyboard slowly brighten to life. No security measures, just like before. Looks like Cassius didn't bother locking up shop before booking it who-knows-where, though Rhys suspected as much when he didn't have any problems getting in here.

Looks like manual searching is the way to go. Annoying, since he got those awesome cybernetics for a reason, but honestly, it's welcome after that whole tech invasion thing with Jack. After rushing through pages as fast as he can with one hand, he stumbles upon an icon with the text “Facility Controls” under it. _Bingo_. Clicking it opens a screen of ways to remotely control the site – lock toggles, emergency sirens, watering systems, the works. Another click, and bluish light floods the room.

“Yes!” He shouts, one arm in the air, and gets to searching.

There isn't much to find for a few minutes, other than the bowl of completely rotten fruit on the table that seems to be the source of that godawful smell. He makes a note to toss that out, and comes across some crates, crouching down to open them. A small white container with a red cross sits inside the second one. Must be his lucky day.

He finds a bathroom a few feet down a hallway connected to the main room (which probably wasn't the main operating center for the facility if he were being honest, but it's _his_ main operating center right now, which totally counts for something since he grabbed the rights), timidly cleans up his wounds the best he can without damaging anything, and takes a considerable amount of pain meds.

Aches quelled for the moment, his legs take him back to the monitor. He considers searching it for anything useful, even though the actual data storage is pretty barren, when his eyes fall on the framed rights to Atlas.

He knows that Atlas had good tech, and he has some experience with corporations, but what is he actually trying to do here?

All he can come up with is _make something good. Something better_.

He sighs.

* * *

Rhys wakes up just before he gets to the part where he pulls out his ECHO implant, and now he can't sleep.

He stares at the ceiling of the small pocket of space that houses the cot. The mere hour he managed to grab was half-restless and half-terrifying hellscape of screaming, fire, and twisted metal. He rubs his face with his hand and swings his legs out of bed, knowing he won't find anymore sleep tonight.

The sickening sound of metal being forcefully disconnected from human muscle and skin keeps revisiting him. When he blinks, he sees his port in his hand. _It would be worse if I kept my eyes closed,_ he thinks, and stumbles into the dark dome room. The lights slowly brighten on, following their new motion sensor programming. Saves him some time that would've been used to go through the computer again.

_I killed people,_ he thinks, and tries not to think.

Half-begun blueprints are scattered across counters, and the newly-restored coffee machine has a few mugs around it. The clink of porcelain fills the silence as Rhys gets some coffee from the eternally running coffee machine, puts it down at another counter, grabs some papers about a weapon prototype, and flops onto a nearby bench.

The coffee wakes him up some more, but looking at the blueprints, he still feels half-asleep. It's like a bunch of static in his head.

He glances at his stupid empty arm hole a few times and goes back to trying to advance this prototype.

_Even the people that survived aren't guaranteed to be safe, because you put them on fucking Pandora. Y'know, the place with bandits and crazy wild animals?_

Ten minutes pass and he realizes this is going nowhere, but if he's awake, he still wants to be productive. Kind of hard to get a company up and running in time to make a profit if you don't actually work on it.

Before he knows it, he's drafting a new arm on the back of the weapon blueprints, thinking about what he could use for parts. Some of the pistols he had seen around here looked like they could be taken apart okay, and he thought he saw some interesting chrome paneling somewhere...

Pencil scratches fill the silence.

* * *

It's been a few days and, well, the plating kinda grates together in a gross way, but it looks done at least, and Rhys knows that first impressions are important in a company, even a Pandora-based one. To be honest, the vast majority of Pandorans probably don't expect sleek design from anything at this point, but hell, _he_ still does. He'd never made an arm before, but he had worked with his old Hyperion one enough to remember some of its inner workings, and guessed the rest. Which worked out okay, so.

“Alright, just gotta connect this bad boy...” The significant lack of Hyperion's influence on this one helps him be more okay with sticking tech back into his body, although he's still nervous. _Jack is gone_ , he tells himself, and swallows the nasty bile about to work its way up his throat when he picks up the arm and works it into his shoulder. The sleek chrome is cool against his fingertips.

The metal connector docks into his shoulder anchor with a few clicking noises, and he whispers a _yes_ to himself. He had to repair the original anchor after it was pretty damaged from the... _improper removal_ of the arm, and even though he lined up his math and tech alright, he wasn't completely sure it would still function. But it did! Go him.

A few twists of the arm show that it's properly responding. No weird pains, no sparks (impressive considering the ungodly amount of electric tape he used in lieu of actual engineering knowledge; by the end of this, 50 percent of him will probably be composed of it). The fingers move fine. It's not super loud, kinda clunky but otherwise functional. And that's something he can work with.

“Great, one down, two to go.” He smiles and snatches up some coffee and some spare parts from his scrap counter. _Man_ , does it feel good to be able to hold two things at once again.

* * *

A new eye implant is in order.

He had been considering venturing out of the Atlas facility – it's pretty secure now that he activated security measures, and there's edible plants there cultivated by an automatic system, but he needs to find out where to get an eye implant that won't give him a crazy infection. This is a more delicate matter than putting an arm into a preexisting shoulder mechanism. It's his eyeball, and he doesn't want to lose an entire eye to an injury or something just because he tried to put together an implant on the fly. He may be stupid, but not _that_ stupid.

This reasoning, while completely logical and responsible, is why he's currently running at full speed towards the edge of some godforsaken pile-of-sticks town.

See, he has no idea how much things are here, and doubts that the 15 and pocket change he had on him would be enough for an actual workable piece of eye tech. So he had tossed some possible barter items into his pockets and hoped for the best. Winging it has taken him this far, so why stop now?

A bullet whizzes past his ear and he almost chokes on his breath.

That's why.

How was he supposed to know that the Atlas pistol he grabbed on his way out the door was completely useless without the specialized ammo to match? Trading it didn't work, and now he can't even shoot it. Next time, he's just gonna return the product to the seller and walk away. _Quietly_. His lungs can't take much more of this.

The scrap dealer he ran into in the middle of the town had a few “donated” eye implants – questionably obtained, but definitely what he was looking for, judging by the legitimate attachments and Hyperion design – and when the deal didn't work... well, he already had the damn thing in his hand, didn't he?

Kind of regretting that now.

Hopefully running in zig zags is actually helping his chances, or else he looks like a total idiot right now. Heavy boots slam repeatedly into the ground behind him, and he spares a glance, only to immediately swing his head back around in terror. Nope, this isn't happening. Big scary guy with a weird metal mask and a gun is totally _not_ chasing him right now.

They were entering the outskirts of the sizable town, and Rhys could see the empty dirt beyond. Weighing his options, he pulls out the Atlas pistol.

“What'd'ya think you're gonna do with that, asshole?” A disconcerting gun-cocking noise follows.

“Uh... something!” Rhys yelps, and then throws both the pistol and a prayer behind his shoulder. _Please please please..._

The smack of metal meeting metal resounds behind him, followed by multiple thuds, and he wastes no time bolting between some settlements to his left and weaving through the last establishments out into the dusty air.

“Whoa, I made it! I'm-I'm alive!” He feels his limbs and face. “I can't believe that worked!”

After celebrating his continued existence on this terrifying rock, he very carefully makes his way back to home base, cradling the new implant in the cupped hand in his pocket. When he gets to the dome, it's dark, and the blue lights blink awake in greeting. He removes his outerwear and gently places the stolen piece of tech on his designated blueprints counter, vibrant yellow making the dirty surface seem duller.

“Okay, where is the...” He knows he put it _somewhere_.

Cabinet doors bang and curses are muttered, until a small but sturdy box thumps down next to the new implant. Rhys enters the number combo in the lock, removes the lid, and lifts out his old ECHO eye implant. It feels weird to touch it again. He regularly debates whether or not he should crush the thing, but is ultimately glad he still has it so that it can help him out with this new one.

Comparing attachment methods and structure, the stolen implant is, if nothing else, a fantastic fake. Everything seems in working order. Tinkering around some minutes more only reveals the port for computer connection and manual transfer of data, both rarely needed anymore. The port on the old implant is identical to the new one.

With that check done, he picks up the old implant again. Looks at it for a long moment.

He makes sure to slide the box, locked, back into the cabinet he found it in before getting to work on the new implant.

Plugging it into the main Atlas computer and pulling it up onscreen immediately triggers an error message. The blue Hyperion interface for the implant is dominated by large text that reads, “ERROR: CANNOT CONNECT TO HYPERION DATABASE. CONFIRM CONNECTION AND TRY AGAIN,” accompanied by a frowny face and a no-wifi signal. So this _had_ belonged to a Hyperion employee... it doesn't sit right in his gut, even though the information isn't all that surprising, even though he reminds himself that Hyperion... kinda sucked.

The database isn't something he can do much about though. Hyperion is kind of in a shitty place right now, to put it lightly. He would be more surprised if he could somehow connect to its database. But then, what data could he use in conjunction with this thing?

Then, an idea hits him, and he almost smacks himself for not thinking of it before. “Of course! I'll just connect it to Atlas. Duh.” He selects “database options” and wrangles with the convoluted options inside that seem more like deterrents to changing your database than anything else. That's Hyperion, for you. Use Hyperion or nothing at all.

He finally arrives at the “available databases” screen, goes to “devices,” and syncs the implant with the Atlas data server via the computer. There isn't a lot in Atlas' own database, especially since most files had been cleared out before he even arrived, but perhaps that just means he'll have to build up Atlas data himself.

* * *

 

> ANALYSIS COMPLETE  
>  Coffee Maker  
>  Manufacturer: Atlas  
>  Model: Atlas Extreme Latte 5000  
>  Status: Held together with duct tape and dreams
> 
> It's functional enough to ensure that you'll never sleep again. Only the best for Atlas employees!

Rhys blinks out of the scanning analysis, yellow eye dimming down from its neon glow. It's connected to the Atlas database, which he's slowly filling up, and its scanning function is completely functional. More than he ever expected, honestly, and he's glad it works, cause it was a pain in the ass to install it on his own. Many tears were shed, but no one needs to know that.

“Huh. Maybe I can manufacture some of these.”

The silver arm and the Atlas-connected eye are so different from the old yellow arm and Hyperion-issued implant that he's not even worried about some remnant of Jack showing up anymore. He'd boast about it all if there were anyone around to boast to, like Vaughn or Sasha or even Fiona. In his isolation, he boasts to himself. It's good. He feels good about this.

(But still, does he really _need_ a functioning port on the side of his head? He'd rather not pass out from plugging shit into his head again. He'll wait until he can pay actual engineers to make something both safe and... virus-proof.)

* * *

 

The complete prototypes rest on the blueprints counter, metal gleaming in the sunlight filtering through the geometric window. Two sleek pistols, a powerful shotgun, and one compact shield that spreads out from the center to cover more distance when needed (Athena's shield might've inspired him). Weapons aren't the only thing Rhys has in mind though, as he's also taken some hints from Atlas' terraforming tech and put together the first draft of some automated agricultural cultivation machines. If Atlas could transform the land to be forgiving enough to grow accessible, edible food, Rhys figures that regular people could do it too. With the right help, that is.

He doesn't plan on making Atlas a household hatred on Pandora. It's doubtful it did much good while it was here, but it's in his hands now. Sure, Pandorans have no reason to put their trust in corporations like Atlas or Hyperion, and Rhys understands that... but maybe he can prove them wrong.

Padding is wrapped around the prototypes and metal clinks as they are slipped into his cases, weapons in one and agricultural drafts in the other. A window pops up in the vision of his eye implant, and he knows what it's a reminder for.

_Meeting with investor @ 11! Note: don't fuck it up._

He closes the window, takes a deep breath, and tightens his tie. “Alright Rhys, this is the first friendly face-to-face interaction you've had in literally months. But it's fine! It'll be fine.” He brushes down the front of his new look – sleek black jacket, vest, dark button-down, added tie for professionalism. At some point between finishing the prototypes and planning this meeting, he remembered that he couldn't walk out of here in some PJs with his raggedy hair unstyled or anything, so he got a trim and cobbled together an outfit that says less “I just woke up and I hate my life” and more “I'm building this company and you should give me money.” The shiny chrome of his hand compliments the black nicely, he thinks. Also, he's got some cool boots on.

The soft-grip handle of the case of papers and weapon prototypes feels heavy in his flesh hand. The neck of his shirt is suddenly chafing, and he swallows around it.

This kind of work reminds him of Hyperion, and Helios, and the people that crashed down, and how he really wishes Vaughn was here to do this with him. He would be great at making sure Rhys' numbers sounded good, and running those numbers in the first place. Everything would just be a lot easier in general if Rhys wasn't so... alone in this. Heck, they were supposed to be climbing up the corporate ladder together, and now that Rhys finds himself so suddenly at the top, full of possibilities... Vaughn's gone.

He hopes Vaughn actually made it out and that he's surviving somewhere out there. He knows Vaughn would make it. He's smart. Not to mention fucking ripped for no reason. Could probably kill a guy with his bare fists.

A chrome hand goes up to run through his hair, before he remembers that it's gelled in a _very_ specific way, and instead moves his hand down to clutch at his pant leg. He's here now, even though he went through some shit to get here. Destruction may have gotten him into this place, but he's not going to act like it was a step on the ladder to success. He's gonna do better than Jack. He will.

A button on the wall is pressed, the exit door slides open, and the sun greets him.

**Author's Note:**

> I miiight have more for this... but unless I write something long enough to add on as another part, this is complete for now ^^


End file.
